Future of Conflict #7: Mediation and the Evolution of Democracy

This week I read Mediation and the Evolution of Democracy by Ken Cloke. The essay is an adapted chapter from Ken’s book Mediation in a Time of Crisis.

Normally, I read an entire book. But not all books are created equal. This essay is so dense that I can’t even put everything I learned in here without violating our attention norms! You’ll notice I rely much more on quotes since the material is already so dense.

The essay is essentially about why democracy must inevitably wrestle with fascism, and what we can do about it.

The “what we can do about it” is more in the sense of “what democratic institutions and ways of interaction should we promote?” over the long term, and less about “how do we deal when the house is on fire!?”

If you’re really concerned about the rise of fascism where you live, right now, this essay alone will not solve your problem. Sorry.

Here are the questions I’m going to answer, based on Ken’s essay:

Why is democracy so fragile?
What makes fascism appealing?
What structural (democratic) changes should we make?
What cultural changes should we make?

Why is democracy so fragile?

Imagine a two-year-old clenching their hair and screaming: “Why meeeeeee?”

For Ken, it’s pretty simple. Electoral democracies are:

rights-based, competitive, adversarial, zero sum games in which vast amounts of status, wealth, and power are won or lost based on win/lose public contests for political office.

In other words: The Stakes Are So High. If the stakes between winning and losing are so high, there’s a lot of incentive for me to mess with the system in order to win. If I can’t use money to mess with the system today, there’s a lot of incentive for me to change the system so I can do so tomorrow…

Probabilistically, somebody “sufficiently corrupt or ruthless” is eventually going to come along and do this.

Plato is more focused on the free speech aspect as a key element of the danger:

Democracy, by permitting freedom of speech, opens the door for a demagogue to exploit the people’s need for a strongman; the strongman will use this freedom to prey on the people’s resentments and fears. Once the strongman seizes power, he will end democracy, replacing it with tyranny….

That explains why people would want to mess with it. It’s the motive. But under what conditions do they succeed?

[Democracy depends] on the willingness of elected and appointed officials to create fair laws, follow them, neutrally enforce them, and risk their lives and careers by being willing to stand up for them.

And in times of crisis, they are required to do so against the wishes of people with far greater status, wealth, and power; people who are determined to resort to lying, bullying, bribery, coercion, contempt, and a variety of legal and illegal means, including violence, to retain them.

That is obviously a lot to ask of a bunch of bureaucrats. Some are going to do it and some aren’t. Again, Ken says this is a natural consequence of the zero-sum nature of electoral politics, which:

Automatically generate desperate attempts to circumvent the rules so as not to lose — both by those at the top and those at the bottom, as each recognizes that elections tend to favor the people and policies that occupy the middle.

He then gives a historically-compiled list of how motivated parties “skew the electoral system by design“, including both administrative measures and changing the discourse to be about “ego, personality, charisma, fame, seductiveness, slickness, and charm”.

Together, these methods convert the state and the entire political process into a spectacle—a charade, a televised reality show, an extension of personal power. They contribute to the creation of an apolitical, media-dominated culture that sidelines citizens, provokes controversy, and routinely ignores, trivializes, or sensationalizes repeated incidents of phoniness, amorality, addictive behavior, pretense, deception, disgrace, cover-ups, lies, and scandals committed by its leaders.

So the root problem is the win/lose nature of electoral politics (the zero-sum game).

Once any process has been defined in win/lose terms, if the stakes are high enough, the rest happens somewhat automatically

For somebody who is interested in maintaining their power against the interest of a majority:

the only remaining question is: what am I willing to do to suppress those who favor an opposing truth, path, or solution, in order to dominate the process and control the outcome?

Sometimes the answer is: “quite a lot”.

So that’s Ken’s answer to why we see the democracy -> fascism transition over and over.

But, what makes fascism appealing in the first place?

If the real benefit of transitioning away from democracy accrues only to a small minority at the top, interested in preserving their own power, how do they get the huge amount of power they need to make the transition?

In order to amass power, it first must be given, ceded, conned, or taken from others. This makes lying, demagogic, and fascistic behaviors, with their aggressive, bullying attitudes toward enemies, competitors, and “outsiders,” essential elements in the “primitive accumulation” of power.

They get the power by making alliances.

Powerful tripartite alliances are occasionally formed between small coteries of wealthy elites who believe they will lose status, wealth, and power through the ordinary operations of democracy; large groups of angry, frightened voters who feel excluded, shut out, or bypassed by rights-based majority rule electoral outcomes; and “natural” demagogues and tyrants who use imagined conspiracies, bullying, lies, threats, and appeals to violence to unite them, turning those at the bottom of society into private armies.

Ultimately, the move to fascism best serves the interests of the wealthy elites, but they can’t do it alone, because they are just a minority. They need to ally with people who are naturally in opposition to the dominant democratic regime(s), because they are losing in some way from the rights-based approaches.

Luckily, in a win-lose system, there are a lot of people who are losing at any given moment (usually close to half). People with legitimate concerns and interests that were denied by the most recent election(s), who feel hopeless and shut out of the system.

(According to the polling data, if you’re not feeling that way right now, you felt that way 16 years ago.)

Conclusion: High Stakes Zero-Sum Game => Lots of Unmet Needs

One great way of turning lots of legitimate unmet needs into power is by lying. It’s a gateway drug of sorts.

Ken quotes some researchers who found:

Demagogues who clearly and deliberately lie are nonetheless seen as positive and regarded as “authentically appealing” by a large number of voters, especially when “one side of a social divide regards the political system as flawed or illegitimate,” and the demagogue is seen as an open and flagrant violator of established norms” who is willing to attack the present system, even in violation of “accepted norms of truth-telling” and political decency.

People don’t mind (and even like) lying when they view the system as flawed or illegitimate (usually because it excluded them). If the system is a lie, then lying about the lying could be the truth.

Lying is also really useful!

Lying is partly intended to encourage irrationality, in preparation for the suppression of empathy and inclusion, and the instigation of violence against enemies both within and without.

More importantly, it serves also as an unambiguous test of personal loyalty and blind obedience, as only those who are unquestioningly loyal and obedient will assert a falsehood simply because the Leader said it.

So the lying has two important roles:

Preparing people for further adventures in irrationality, like political insults, stereotypes, and slurs, and
As a loyalty test.

Unless you’re actively involved in such a loyalty cult at the moment, or you think the benefits to fascism outweigh its flaws, you can probably see why this is Bad. Ken has another awesome list of the Bad Results of this kind of behavior that is great to read.

Importantly, these results are a mix of impacts of the lying and oppression on the victims and on the perpetrators. Ken, like Gandhi and me, views anybody involved in oppression as a victim, regardless of which side they’re on.

He also gets into the specific differences between lying, demagoguery, and fascism, and exactly how the shift to fascism happens (from historical examples). I put all that stuff in the quotes and notes blog post, because there’s just not enough space here.

Maybe I’ll just include one tidbit, from our old friend Hannah Arendt, that I really liked:

A too-little noted hallmark of fascist propaganda that it was not satisfied with lying but deliberately proposed to transform its lies into reality.

Hannah gives a Nazi example. We (the fascists) start with the lie that Jews are homeless beggars and parasites. Then we pass a bunch of laws, strip their possessions, and force the German Jews across the border (like beggars). Then we say, “See! They are beggars and parasites! I told you so!”

Ultimately, what makes fascism appealing is the pre-existing reservoir of unmet needs, created by the zero-sum institutions in democracy.

What structural (democratic) changes should we make?

Genuine, interest-based, substantive, participatory, direct, and collaborative forms of democracy are, by their nature, levelers—forces for equality, equity, fairness, and deeper democracy. They serve as places of potential transition to non-adversarial, non-zero-sum social, economic, political, and ecological relationships and processes.

That is, our democracy has not gone deep enough.

The radical idea here is that the state can go from being the “neutral” arbiter of conflicts to the “omnipartial” mediator, responsible for creating conditions favorable to conflict resolution.

(Remember, omnipartial means, “I’m on everybody’s side”.)

I’ll give you Ken’s list of core values that a democracy needs to adopt, which will be powerful and overwhelming, and then I’ll give you my one-line summary.

Ken’s list:

Inclusive Participation
All interested parties are included and invited to participate fully in discussing, designing, and implementing content, processes, and relationships.

Consensus-Based Decision-Making
Decisions are made by consensus wherever possible, and nothing is considered final until everyone is in agreement.

Value of Diversity and Differences
Diversity and honest differences are viewed as sources of dialogue, leading to better ideas, healthier relationships, and greater unity.

Challenging Bias and One-Sidedness
Biases, stereotypes, prejudices, assumptions of innate superiority, and ideas of intrinsic correctness are considered divisive and are discounted as one-sided descriptions of more complex, multi-sided, paradoxical realities.

Openness and Empathy in Communication
Openness, authenticity, appreciation, and empathy are regarded as better foundations for communication and decision-making than secrecy, rhetoric, insult, and demonization.

Dialogue Over Debate
Dialogue and open-ended questions are deemed more useful than debate and cross-examination.

Rejection of Coercive Methods
Force, violence, coercion, aggression, humiliation, and domination are rejected—both as methods and as outcomes.

Priority of Cooperation and Collaboration
Cooperation and collaboration are ranked as primary, while competition and aggression are considered secondary.

Recognition of Legitimate Interests
Everyone’s interests are accepted as legitimate, acknowledged, and satisfied wherever possible, consistent with others’ interests.

Prioritizing Process and Relationship
Processes and relationships are considered at least as important as content—if not more so.

Integration of Emotion and Logic
Attention is paid to emotions, subjectivity, and feelings, as well as to logic, objectivity, and facts.

Shared Responsibility for Growth
Everyone is regarded as responsible for participating in improving content, processes, and relationships, and for searching for synergies and transformations.

Invitation to Deeper Communication
People are invited into heartfelt communication and deeper awareness, and are encouraged to reach resolution, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

Addressing Systemic Sources of Conflict
Chronic conflicts are traced to their systemic sources, where they can be prevented and redesigned to discourage repetition.

Redefining Victory
Victory is regarded as obtainable by everyone and is redirected toward collaborating to solve common problems, leaving no one feeling defeated.

Note that there is nothing “progressive” or “leftist” in this list, from a content perspective. It’s about process and expanding the circle of governance to include as many of those who are impacted as possible.

These are the values that underlie modern mediation and conflict resolution techniques, to nobody’s surprise.

Ank: It boils down to investing in the process of relationship.

That takes a lot of time. I remember in college how there was one co-op house that functioned based on consensus (It was called Synergy). I never lived there and never sat in on one of those meetings because I was deathly afraid of how much time it would take.

An interest-based state that does not have win-lose elections would be much more time consuming than our convenient, consumer version of democracy. That’s a major drawback for people who work, run businesses, have kids, or have hobbies.

Basically everyone.

The one possible advantage is protection from fascism though meeting the underlying needs of the vast majority of people who live here.

How would this happen? It would have to start on a local level, because:

That’s where stronger relationships are already established
There’s less of a honeypot of power to incentivize vested interests

How exactly do we do this somewhat efficiently? I’m not sure. But I’m going to find out.

What cultural changes should we make?

It’s inescapable in anything you read from me that the outsides and insides are connected.

The state as a mediator will start with you and me as a mediator.

This requires everything we’ve been talking about all along. I’ll focus here on one aspect, which is seeing our approach to conflict as a story, and thereby maintaining the complexity we would normally want to collapse.

We must approach political statements from both sides the way mediators often treat ordinary conflict stories: as less concerned with factual accuracy and more with emotional truth. These statements often serve as confessions or requests, disguised as accusations and insults.

The statements are clues to a deeper reality:

This does not mean agreeing with everyone factually, but rather focusing on surfacing the underlying non-zero-sum interests that make the facts seem compelling.

Don’t worry, this is not moral relativism!

We need not let our desire to connect and empathize with both sides lead us to condone what we know to be harmful or false. It is entirely possible to show that we care about people — not by agreeing with the “facts” they assert, but by asking questions that deepen their understanding of the underlying issues and by using similar methods that invite reflection rather than defensiveness.

Ugh, who wants that? We do, apparently.

😉

Thanks for reading episode #7.

Until now, most of the patterns and lessons I’ve extracted are about how we relate to each other in business or personal relationships. They sometimes explicitly address political issues as sources of conflict, but didn’t provide political solutions.

This episode is different.

Ken is pointing towards patterns of social and political organization. They are still based on personal values, but it’s very clearly about something more. I’m going to explore this path a little more and get into the literature on Citizens’ Assemblies, which is another actionable pattern in this field that you could bring to your home town and put into practice.

(Especially if you’re the mayor)

Together,
~ Ankur